Since the rise of the industry, cannabis cultivators and processors have navigated uncharted waters in terms of compliance and contamination. It’s a natural biological process for plants to contract diseases or harmful bacteria often. Still, it can quickly become a detriment to your entire crop and consumers who rely on it for medicinal or recreational relief.
There is no federal code or regulation around the processing or handling of cannabis products, compared to that of the drug, food or alcohol industries. States that have converted to a legal cannabis market are responsible for implementing their testing regulations and policies, while the federal legalization of cannabis is still a looming discussion.
Between the disconnect of each state’s quality standards, the lack of insight or validity into proper post-harvest processing, and truncated research behind the science of cannabis cultivation methods—one thing for certain is that cannabis decontamination is paramount.
The industry has turned in every direction to determine the safest and most accurate process for identifying toxins, fungi or bacteria in cannabis and its processing methods.
So how does a booming legal cannabis market ensure consistent quality control through the cannabis chain of custody?
The first factor that plays into the importance of cannabis decontamination is the legality and federal status of the plant. Because of the Scheduled 1 status of cannabis in the Controlled Substances Act, simple safety processing regulations that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would typically require for food, beverage or alcohol industries do not apply to cannabis. Cannabis products are considered by the Federal Government to be a drug, and the Federal Government has determined that irradiation is generally recognized as safe and effective (see Vol. 84, No. 241. December 16, 2019, Federal …
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